WHEN: 26-30th August 09Mathinahalli: playing with stories was a festival of exchange and mutual gestures designed to document the neighbourhood’s stories about childhood, play and the city at large. These stories will help in capturing the evolution and dynamism in the way the residents of the neighbourhood have played in the spaces around them across generations.

At Mathinahalli, visitors could eat (choco cookies and lemonade), get quick beauty fixes (hair braiding, temp tattoos, face painting), get themselves sketched, learn craft and art skills and audition for a film in exchange for sharing their stories and experiences. The interest was in creating an archive of stories from the neighbourhood which dealt with play and playspaces. My attempt was to create this archive in a way which also served as a demonstration of mechanisms of intangible exchange, barter and gift economies.